Experimental Implementation of a Leader-Follower Strategy for Quadrotors Using a Distributed Architecture

Abstract

This paper deals with a distributed experimental implementation of a leader-follower coordination scheme using quadrotors. A set of inter-agent distances defines the position of the followers about the leader. The desired position of each agent is kept using a robust local nonlinear controller in combination with a distributed trajectory generator. The distributed implementation comes from the fact that each quadrotor has an onboard digital processor to compute its control algorithm, and there is a wireless communication channel between the leader and the followers. Real-time experiments show the performance of the distributed leader-follower strategy.